Thanks to everyone who helped with this over the last few days. I'll have a blog post, this evening I hope, on the process. At this point I don't think we'll have shirts for Make Day, it takes longer than I'd anticipated to make them, and to speed things up we'd need multiple sets of masks. I'm going to try and cut some masks out of a more water proof material ASAP, but getting shirts, getting them washed, painted, dry, set, and washed before Saturday morining seems very unlikely. I still want to make them and the drive will be going all summer, so I think it's worth doing even if we can't have them for Make Day, I'm bummed, but I think we should make a "Member Drive" sign for Make Day, and work on the shirt for later.

In that case I will try to use the vinyl cutter on shelf paper and see if I can find the settings to make repeatable stencils.

Right now I have tried it twice, and both times I have missed the settings as shelf paper is much thinner than the paper backed vinyl.I will try a couple zombies in vinyl as well, but the Duracal (name brand of the vinyl) glue may not come free of the shirt.

Also I will order a roll of the inexpensive white heat transfer stuff, that would allow us to just press it on, though I do not own my own heat press, so we may have to create or innovate a press. (I was thinking a 5/8 inch sheet of steel, heated in a toaster oven to the 375 ish degrees, and then it is just press for 20 to 30 sec.)

I will talk with you about this a bit later, and send me those pathed logos too.

hey otto, call me crazy, but what about using something like cintra (or another rigidish voc safeish plastic) in the cnc mill? it'd just need to trace the perimeter of each letter/form, and with a small bit, might do ok?

in similar fashion a long time ago i generated screen printing screens by cutting patterns on overhead projector sheets, (stuck to work surface with re-positionable adhesive, which might hold them down for cnc milling) sprayed the top with super 77, and stuck that onto a screen. it never comes off, but it gives you a screen print pretty damn quick, and lets you do inclosed stuff w/o a lot of trouble.

If we did on-site then we would have to do one color. The time for coat 1 to dry before coat 2 would be pretty long, even with a jury rigged dryer.I'd say one color. and shy away from thick applications, more line art-y. I can print vellum designs up to 12x18 and transfer to a screen. If I get my **** together tonight, I can put together my UV exposure box and timer, and burn a screen tomorrow. But that's cutting it real close.

It is forecasted to be quite rainy, so we wouldn't want to depend on anything that requires being outside. I tried a quick test to cut a mask with the CNC and a little bitty bit. It worked pretty well. The material is .06" thick plastic of some sort, perhaps vinyl, it's should as a shower surround material.

CNCed_test_word.jpg (34.21 KiB) Viewed 3118 times

The picture makes the edge look much worse than it is, I think it was taken from the back, at any rate the letter edges are quite good.

I don't have shirts, at this point either. I assumed we would be able to make them for Saturday, so I was holding off. I'm still not sure if we'll have a plan in time, but if so we'll need to source shirts locally, anyone have ideas on a cheap source, we were looking at 3.50 ish a shirt for 6.1 oz white online. Not sure if we can get close locally.

I mentioned to some of you that there is a manual screen printing press in a current auction. Not to sound like a broken record, but I know nothing about this, anybody able to speak to the quality and serviceability of this item? It's not small by any means.

It's at Holf-Hilk in Northeast, and can be seen daily from 9-4 if anybody wants to swing by. I love going and poking at things, but don't know enough to evaluate something like this. There's current 1 bid for $1 on it.

The press looks nice a good cheap 4 station press run 300-400. But 4 stations take up a lot of room. 2 stations are more friendly space wise. Tho you can just attach 2 and leave 2 off, so I guess it not a problem.

Didnt get home from work at a reasonable time, so no UV exposure build. Dont think airbrush or screenprint would move inside very well from a "make no mess" stand=point as both are quite messy.